AquaMark Score

Ok team, I have the 6100 P4 3gig 512 ddr ati 64ddr dedicated..Over Clocked to 411/276 and my aquamark score is only 13,857...
That seems LOW to me... any suggestions??? im open to anything here... I was under the impression that with a machine with these specs that well, it would be better... any thoughts here?

 

With a ATI card with only 64megs of RAM ...even when oc'ed, thats not too supprising. What do you THINK it should be? I've personally never bassed too much weight on a systems overall proformance on a video benchmark. I'd rather mesure it on something like SiSoft Sandra.

Id be willing to bench mine and compare... if i can get a stable oc on that 9600 to match yours. 64 megs is pretty shallow for video memory after all, so I wouldnt sweat it much.

Maybe post your results on a ATI fourm like Rage3d.com, and see if its in line with others.

Also...were you on battery or plugged in? HUGE difference!

 

Plugged in... I just figured it would be higher due to the nice cpu and ram...

 

I'd have to jump to Aquamarks site, or go fourm fishing at rage3d to refresh my memory....but i could swear that the Aquamark bench is a card only benchmark... not a system wide bench like some of the older programs were.

But now i'm annoyed at my self cause i forgot...so off i go to refresh whats left of my mind. I'll let ys know what i find.

cheers!

 

Will do. It is just frustrating as people are quick to dismiss my questions being that the laptop is averatec and not dell or gateway or somesuch. This seems to be the most active forum for us averatec users. Even averatecforums.com gets maybe 3 postings a day!! I worry that what I have it over clocked too is too much and I dont want to risk damaging it! On a side note, I installed an external 80 gig 7200rpm 8meg drive (from my old desktop in a powered enclosure) and I noticed no preformance increase in the games I installed to that drive. After further thought, however, I noticed the game was hitting the laptop hd more than anything and I attribute that to the OS being on the slow drive so there really wont be a preformance increase with the external. I am hoping an internal 7200 drive and 2 sticks og 512 ddr will make a difference.
Damage - what games if ANY do you play on your laptop as well? Applications? How do you like it? Was it worth it?
The more I use it the more I wish I would have gotten the smaller averatec (sub $800) for the smaller size and better battery life.

 

the external drive would still be limited depending on the connection. the standard ide connection inside computers is alot faster then usb 2 or firewire, and remember that usb 2 is a variable speed. in regards to the hd in the notebook being accessed would prolly be due to the fact that the drivers for everything is on the internal drive (along with the OS like you said). I have to say if you are this concerned about games, you should have got a gaming notebook.

 

Rad,
Im not super concerned with games. Truth be told I play computer games on average 2 hours a week...if that! I just want to make sure when I am the laptop is preforming to its Peak. I think you have to adjust to a laptop and I am still going through that
I am using it as a desktop replacement that I can take with me.
Anyhow back on topic....
I think I will relax untill I install the internal 7200 and two sticks of 512...
Back to the Ati,
Does what I currently have it clocked at (411/276) seem dangerous?? As in too much? I have noticed 99% of the heat is over the HD area so Im wondering if I have it set too high as to create too much heat and do damage. Anyone else here have their 6100 overclocked???? What do you have it set at?

 

Understandable, i would prolly be the same way if i had bigger games on mine. The best way i can say to judge your overclocking is to fell the exhaust air coming out the back under the s-vid, usb, ir port. if its really hot, its prolly to high. I would agree with the need for adjustment from pc-> notebook, one thing to think about would be that a desktop can have like a 500 watt power supply, while the power adapter for the 6100 series is only about 135 watts i think, and the processor (p4 ht anyway) uses in excess of 85 watts. There isn't a whole lot of power left for everything else. If you use it on batteries, expect the new drive to take some of the life away, it takes more power for that speed. The new drive being the main one will prolly give a big boost in performance, its nearly double the current HD speed.

 

I never gave much thought to the power supply issue you broght up. Good point! I know I would never even bother to play a game on battery so thats not an issue. I plan to test it tongiht on just battery and "max battery" settings in XP to see what I can squeeze outta the battery (no games and no cd burning) and I will post my results. I also have the Targus Lapop Cooling pad thingy underneath and running but honestly I can't see that its doing much of anything. I dont feel much air movement with it going. I emailed averatec about the battery and cd bay. My questions were do they have a better battery and is the cd bay swapable with anything? Basically no to both questions. I was hoping you could pull teh cd drive and stick an extra battery but no! And no planned accessories according to the email either!
ON the issue with battery life, if I can at least watch 2 dvd's from the hard drive (i.e. rip them when I have a power source) on max battery settings then I would be happy. With the batt life that is. Dunno how possible thats gonna be....

 

If you're lucky, you can watch a small DVD (less than two hours)


I couldn't use a 200w power inverter (makes 120vac out of 12vcd from cars and planes) for the laptop, even without a battery, the interter would shut down because of the high current draw !![ !]

but this very same power inverter can handle a 120w 8" subwoofer, with moderate-high volume

go figure

 

speaking of max battery setting, its pretty much useless, the P4 HT doesn't have any power saving capabilities. From what I found on the Intel website, this processor is about the only one that doesn't have power saving features like speed/voltage control (like Intel SpeedStep for instance) that pretty much every other notebook processor has. I guess this is because this is a desktop processor, not one designed for a notebook. Its built for peak performance all the time. If Averatec would take a hint and make a bigger battery, or one for the drive bay, us customers would be more happy, and they would prolly sell more of these units. There is another person in this forum who has a P4 HT but his battery is a 12 cell, while ours is only an 8 cell, and he says he gets 2 1/2 to 3 hours on a charge.

 

UPDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went to the averatec website and noticed a agp driver?? hmmm I foolishly assumed everything was installed new but I guess not. I installed the agp driver, Now I have 8x AGP and my aquamark score jumped up to 20,847!!!!! 6K point GAIN!!! NO OVERCLOCKING!!!
I am thrilled! I am playing my games on High Detail very well (occasional hiccups but that i can live with) Moral of the story I am very very very happy now!!! This machine was totally worth it!!! Thanks for all the help guys!!!

WHO HAS THE 12 cell battery?????? I gotta get me one!!! I'm gonna look for more drivers I thought I had lol!

 

I guess i should say the person who has the 12 cell batt, his computer is a Compaq. a different brand from us. What i have noticed, is that other big name brands, use bigger batteries when they build a machine with a powerful processor like ours. But noo averatec decided to cope out saying that it is a full desktop processor and therefore won't have the same batt life as a mobile processor. thats just being cheap imo.